Misplacement
by hell-whim
Summary: This time, Roy's pocket-watch isn't in the perfect place. [FMAB AU]


**Title:** Misplacement

**Summary:** This time, Roy's pocket-watch isn't in the perfect place.

**Notes: **This little fic is for FMA Week's prompt _damaged_ and will probably make a lot more sense if you've seen the OVA "Yet Another Man's Battlefield"

**Misplacement**

The truck tires spit gravel over her discarded kit bag, and Riza shades her eyes with a hand, squinting around at the camp. This is as close to the line as the trucks will go—her orders to report are a whole grid east, so she'll have to make the rest of the way on foot.

Some wood-framed tents and prefab metal shacks form a hunched village of rutted lanes and pitted plazas. The requisite crossroads sign stands in the center of the largest open space: _home_ back west, _glory_ east, and _hell_ north, to the tent with a big equal-armed cross painted on its canvas roof. Two ambulances idle just to the left of the tent's entrance. A foot sticks past the end of one, burnt bright red and motionless.

The soldiers ringing the crossroads are as lifeless as the sand beneath her feet: black eyes and bowed shoulders, chins resting on hands crossed over the barrels of their dusty rifles. It's hard to tell if they're staring at her—clean uniform and neat hair and worst of all hips and breasts—or if she's simply wandering through the angle of their hollow gaze. Riza hoists the kit bag over her shoulder and turns from the sign. _Onward to glory_, she thinks, biting back the urge to hum the melody.

A third ambulance twists around the corner and stops, disgorging a squad of walking wounded. Riza makes the mistake of eye contact—a sergeant jumps out and waves her over.

"On deck, private! Grab a litter and follow me."

She doesn't bother to correct the rank—she climbs onto a floor slick with blood and takes the handles. The soldier lying in the litter is unearthly still. No more than a boy, with smooth cheeks and watery blue eyes. He makes no noise as they march him inside the tent and set him on a waiting table.

"Shove off," says the nurse who meets them, prodding the boy's slack face. "No sense wasting the plasma. Set him 'round back with the lot."

The medical tent is a maze of beds and crates and bodies. Riza keeps her gaze fixed on the back of the sergeant's head, refusing to be distracted by the blood or the screams or the fingers that brush against her legs. They all whisper the same quiet plea for water, and Riza swallows hard, concentrating on keeping her grip and setting each foot firm, one in front of the other.

They set the boy where directed, and the sergeant motions her to follow him back out. Her protests are ignored, and so she gives up and falls in line, unloading the rest of the ambulance, litter by litter, as sweat drips down her neck and the sun continues its relentless climb.

Another ambulance arrives—or maybe they just keep refilling the same one. Her first day at war, and Riza carries fifteen comrades to a wheezing death in the shade. Beds are cleared and bodies are carried back out and eventually the fingers stop grazing her legs and the whispers quiet. When the sergeant is finished with her, Riza wanders the tent half-dazed, stumbling between the rows.

The front of the tent is triage, where soldiers sorted by wounds into only three categories: dead, near-dead, and worthy of plasma. Those in need of surgery are sent through a pair of thin wood doors to the theater next door. Everyone else must wait outside for an available nurse. The ones beyond hope are taken to the back section, separated by a long red curtain .

She steps past with no agenda or intent more complex than following the established rhythm of her feet. Hours past due at her post, Riza casts a sweeping glance across the array of soldiers—some dead, some just hovering, but all quiet. All waiting.

The only voice comes from an officer at the far end of the tent, bent over a low cot, holding a friend's blood-dusted hand to his chest.

"The ceremony's gonna be something to see," he says. "You and me in dress blues. Gracia in white silk. Red roses and yellow lilies everywhere."

She shouldn't intrude, but there's nothing to do but keep watching. She approaches the bed slowly, watching the slow reveal of the wounded man—supine, dirty boots and dirty trousers, blood-soaked bandages wrapped loosely over a torso straining to inflate with breath, skin grey over thin arms, IV and tubes hanging empty.

"Don't know how big the ceremony will be," the officer says, leaning up to brush aside the man's disheveled hair. "I know you hate crowds."

She sees his face at last and stops, pain sudden as a knife between her ribs.

"Roy?"

The officer falls silent as his gaze snaps around to her.

"Who are you? Do you know him?"

She can't answer, stare locked onto Roy's face: his eyes closed, his mouth half-open, breath wheezing from between pale lips.

It is instinct to kneel beside him, to take his empty hand and press it between hers, as though urging her warmth to spread into him.

"Roy? Can you hear me? It's Riza."

His only response is a weak exhale, and he blurs, growing distant and indistinct before her.

"What happened?"

"He was shot," the officer replies, as numb as she feels. "They think it hit an artery, and there's—there's nothing they can do."

"Hughes," Roy rasps suddenly, and they both tense. "Tell me—"

"I'm right here, Roy. I'm not going anywhere."

"Tell me about..."

He pulls his hands from their grip, and his eyelids flutter open, head rolling on the thin pillow. He gasps and coughs.

"You," he whispers, as his eyes find Riza's. He lifts a hand shakily, reaching to touch her face. "I remember you."

His hand is cold, and she holds it there, against her cheek, until Hughes pulls the sheet over Roy's sightless eyes.


End file.
